


and the rain left.

by youlovelythief



Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 10:50:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7681480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youlovelythief/pseuds/youlovelythief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the war is done, they sit down together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and the rain left.

**Author's Note:**

> alright kubo FINE. if you won't right the "memories in the rain" conversation that i have been waiting so many years for, then i will. FINE kubo FINE.

They sit down together. When the war is done and they find each other again, when Soul Society begins repairing and they have served their duty, they go home and climb the stairs to his room. As she folds her legs primly on his bed, she looks around, and the remnants of her in the room surprise her. Her drawings are in a stack on his desk, hidden underneath a pile of textbooks, while her markers still sit in a cup with his pens. Between the nook of his desk and his closet are her white sheets and pillows, folded neatly, as though he hadn't touched them since removing them.

Wondering what else he has stashed away, she leans her head down between her knees, trying to get a peek underneath the bed.

"Oi, what are you doing?"

She swings back up to look at him as he finishes tugging a shirt over his head. "Where is my sunhat?"

"What?"

She springs up and trots past him to slide open his closet, balancing on her tiptoes to look at the highest shelf. "My sunhat," she repeats, humming idly. "I didn't get to take it with me last time, and I really did like it. You remember how my face sunburns easily." Turning around, she continues, "If you gave it to Yuzu, though, I'll forgive you—"

He's in front of her, then, his chest merely inches from her nose, and simultaneously, she feels a warm weight drop onto her lower back and his hand gently grasp her wrist.

She falls silent. Her head lists forward, her forehead barely touching the fabric of his shirt.

“How are you?” he asks. Rukia feels his voice thrum from deep within his chest.

She tilts her chin up to look at him, smiles faintly. “I’m okay.”

He returns the expression, brown eyes clear and soft. “Me too.” He pulls away suddenly, leaving the base of Rukia’s spine cold as the air conditioning hits it. Ichigo turns to face the window and lazily stretches his arms above his head, while Rukia steps over to his desk, lightly fingers the cup of markers.

“So,” he says, turns to look at her, “my dad told me about my mom. Told me how he met her when he was, y’know, a shinigami, and when she was…when she was a Quincy.” He smiles, almost painfully, as the word leaves his mouth.

“A _Quincy?”_ she asks, eyes wide, hand frozen above the pens.

“Yeah,” he says, voice tight. “Explains a lot, doesn’t it?”

“Ichigo, it explains _everything_.”

“They…they fought Aizen, Rukia. They fought an _arrancar_. It bit her and possessed her, and my dad saved her from it. And now—Rukia, he says my mask _looks_ like it. That’s fucking insane, right? And my mom—Mom died because of Ywach. Not because of that damned Hollow, she died when Ywach was fucking reborn or whatever, he fucking killed her and took her power and he—“

“And we defeated him, Ichigo.” Rukia touches his shoulder, and he stops, focuses his eyes on hers again, listens to the sound of his own ragged breathing. She stares up at him, her lips pressed into a hard line, dark blue eyes foggy—with tears, he suddenly realizes, blinking away his own. Two slip out of their own accord, coasting down his cheeks as Rukia says again, “He is gone, Ichigo. We won.”

He turns away and drags a hand down his face, takes a deep, steadying breath. Anchors himself to that feather-light weight on his arm.

“Rukia.”

“Ichigo.”

“Did you know my dad was a Shiba?”

They do not lie to each other.

“Nii-sama told me who Isshin used to be,” she says quietly, knowing this question was coming. “In Soul Society,” she adds, “before you rescued me. After, I did not know if you knew. I did not know if you cared, or if Kurosaki-san had his reasons, I didn’t—I didn’t know what my place was. So I said nothing.”

Sighing, Ichigo drops onto the bed with a creak of his mattress, and Rukia sits back down beside him, hands in her lap.

"I had a cousin, apparently. I think you knew him."

Rukia tenses. He does not look at her.

"His name was Kaien Shiba."

 She crumples the hem of her dress in her fist.

"He was vice-captain of the Thirteenth Division."

Finally—her hand flattens out again. “Yes.” She closes her eyes. "Kaien-dono was my vice-captain."

He stays silent, and this time, he lets himself look at her, softly letting his gaze touch her straight back, her trembling hands, her controlled breathing. He does not pry.

She takes a deep breath.

"Rukia."

Startled, her eyes snap open, and her breath escapes her as his hands fold over hers, steadying them. Staring down at them, her pale fingers with their broken fingernails and his large, tan hands with their much too manly creases, she wonders how long they've been evading this moment.

"Yes," she murmurs, letting her eyes fall closed. "Yes."

The warmth of his palms leave the backs of her hands as she hears the covers shift against his jeans, two dull, solid thuds as his knees hit the bare wooden floor. Rukia blinks to see Ichigo’s black t-shirt stretching along the broad expanse of his back as he rummages beneath his bed, only to lean back up holding her sunhat. Slightly taken aback, hesitantly pleased, Rukia does nothing but stare at the white brim held so tenderly by his scarred, callused fingers.

Before she can thank him, Ichigo lightly takes her wrist with one hand and firmly plants the hat on her head with the other. Still on his knees, he tugs at the lip of the hat experimentally, then lets his hand trail down a tendril of her hair so briefly, so imperceptibly, she wonders if he’ll always steal gestures like this, out of habit.

“You don’t talk about him.”

His hand falls to join his other, where it lays on the bed wrapped around her own.

“Rukia,” he says, “Byakuya told me I look like him.”

“Not to me,” she says immediately, because that is the truth. That has always been the truth.

She reaches for him, tentatively touches his face, and he understands, moving to her side, slipping one arm behind her to rest on the bed. Swiping her thumb across his cheek, she carefully looks him in the eye and reaffirms, “Ichigo, I have never thought that.”

“I know, Rukia, _Christ_ , I know, I’m just—“ He flops his head down onto her lap, his hair lightly tickling the tops of her knees. "He was my cousin, and I didn't know him, and you knew him so well, and—" He closes his eyes, grits his teeth, his voice rough like sandpaper. "—it was before we even met, but I just—"

"I killed him."

She goes very still in the silence that bears down on her shoulders. Finally, underneath the roaring sound of her heartbeat, he says her name, but she keeps going, because she's never said it out loud before and she doesn't have time to explain.

"A hollow stole his body and murdered many shinigami, and I—he was my vice-captain, he would have rather died than let his body kill his subordinates, and he did. He died protecting his division, his pride. I killed him, but—in Hueco Mundo—"

She can feel Ichigo's gaze on her face, focused and unflinching, and suddenly there are tears falling, falling, falling, but "—in Hueco Mundo," she gasps, "Aizen had made the hollow into an arrancar, and it still had his body. I found him again, and—I knew he was already dead because I had killed him so—long ago, but his body was still killing people. I killed him again. It wasn't him, but it felt like killing him again.

"And—" She takes a shaky breath and lets it go slowly, tightly, controlled, if being a Kuchiki has taught her nothing else it is _control_ , she bends her head forward, her hands gripping the back of his shirt. "Why?" she whispers, almost angrily. "Why did I have to kill him twice? Why couldn't he just—" Her hair skims the nape of his neck, and she sees her own tears stain the fabric beneath her fingers. "—stay dead?"

Bunching his shirt against her cheek, Rukia lets herself cry.

She cries and sobs and lets out small, ragged yells, Rukia blows her nose on his shirt and hiccups and continues to cry, cries for Kaien, for how terrified she was during the war, for how terrified she has been for so long of losing the people she loves, for all the years she spent alone, for all that she could not protect, for those seventeen months. Rukia sobs over the fact that they won, that her friends are all safe, that Byakuya is proud of her, that she attained her power, that she got him back, that she’s not letting him go again if she can help it.

Underneath the havoc of her sobs, Rukia slowly becomes aware of Ichigo against her thighs, his deep, measured breathing—chest expanding and deflating, his exhalations barely rippling the cotton of her dress. She focuses on their tempo, anchors herself to them, lets her fingers crookedly unclench and relax across his rising, then falling back. Her cheek falls to rest against his shoulder blade, the cloth damp with her own tears, her puffy eyes closed, a blanket of exhaustion settling over her.

On the cusp of sleep, Rukia feels Ichigo’s arms slide up her torso, hears the bedframe protest as he climbs onto the bed with her in one fluid motion. He simply fits his chin into the crook of her shoulder, leaving her arms loosely linked around his neck, staring bleary-eyed at his pillows through stray spikes of orange hair. She settles into him, pulls him tighter to her, feels the tension in his muscles as he reciprocates.

Rukia lets her eyes flutter closed—warm, comfortable, and lighter than she has felt in a very long time.

“I love you.”

She murmurs his name into his hair, half-asleep.

“I love you,” he says again.

There is the soft, desperate press of lips against her collarbone, and as Ichigo slowly moves up her neck, an absent hum gently rises in Rukia’s throat. Her hands slide from the nape of his neck to cup his face, and Rukia stares up at him from dark, half-lidded eyes as he pulls away from her jaw.

He leans down to her, drags his nose along her cheek, questioning, clear brown eyes never leaving hers. He’s so close Rukia can make out each and every freckle sprayed across his face, and her fingernail lightly scrapes along his cheek as she takes him all in.

Then she smiles, and finally—

“Yes.”

 The sunlight streams in from his window, tying ribbons around their entangled limbs, and Ichigo hopes this warmth never leaves him.


End file.
